How to Accompany: Tracing a Century of Memoirs and Manuals of the Collaborative Arts

Abstract: Collaborative piano has emerged as an independent discipline and course of study in the last century. Books on the subject generally fall into the category of memoir or instructional manual, though the two categories are not mutually exclusive: a book in one category often contains elements of the other, and both offer an important perspective on the expected skills and evolution of performance practice for this comparatively young discipline. This article offers a survey of these texts on collaboration, noting that the publication of books runs parallel with the development of contemporary instruction in collaborative piano.